England have looked a spinner short in Mumbai, but it may be that there is no solution to their ills in India while Virat Kohli remains in such imperious form
George Dobell in Mumbai10-Dec-2016Just as you shouldn’t expect a dentist to turn up to work with a spanner and sledgehammer, so you shouldn’t turn up in Mumbai with a pack of seamers and think you have the tools for the job.On a surface on which India’s spinners claimed all 10 of England’s first innings wickets, England found themselves attempting to bounce out the Indian batsman for a while. They didn’t take the second new ball until the 130th over and, when they did, they initially placed a field which included one slip and four men on the boundary. There really wasn’t anything in the surface or the conditions to help their four seamers.It might be simplistic to conclude that England just misread the surface. While it is true that there was little of the swing, reverse or conventional, for which they might have hoped, they also argued that they have picked a side that plays to their strengths. And it is true that, by most criteria, England have a much deeper and stronger selection of seamers than spinners.But, in these conditions, it left England with an unbalanced attack and some players all but redundant. Really, they’ve called for a plumber when they needed an electrician.Not for the first time, either. In the second-innings in Rajkot, Ben Stokes, Stuart Broad and Chris Woakes contributed nine overs between them. In the second innings in Visakhapatnam, Moeen only bowled 19 deliveries despite the absence of Zafar Ansari due to injury. And, in Mohali, Gareth Batty could have been used as a scarecrow for all the use he was with the ball.It was similar for Woakes here. By the time he took the second new ball, somewhere around 3pm on Saturday, it had been 78 overs and about 23 hours since he had last been required to bowl. He and Ben Stokes have only contributed eight overs each in the first 142 of the India innings; that’s the same amount as part-time spinner, Joe Root. It is hard to see how England required both of them as well as James Anderson and Jake Ball.”Leading into the game, we thought there might be a bit more in it for the seamers,” Joe Root admitted afterwards. “But it’s not quite worked out that way so far.”In hindsight, I think we would have liked to play an extra spinner. But it would be silly to think about things that are out of our hands now. We’ve just got to make the best of what we’ve got.”
It may well be that there is no combination of players available to England to prevail against India in these conditions
But do they need six bowlers? Why, when their batting has been a consistent weakness, do they not pick the extra batsman and put their trust in five bowlers? After all, four bowlers was enough when they won here in 2012 – all but three overs in India’s second innings were bowled by England’s two spinners – and they do have, in Root and Keaton Jennings, respectable support bowlers as required. It was Root, the seventh bowler in India’s innings here, who made the long-awaited double-breakthrough.Part of the problem is the lack of faith England would appear to have in the form of their support batsmen at present. So while they could have picked Gary Ballance or Ben Duckett, they seem to have concluded that neither will make much of a difference. In which case, you wonder why the selectors didn’t act after the Bangladesh part of this tour and replace Ballance with a batsman they felt they could trust.Equally, they appear to lack faith in the support spinners. But while Batty was largely redundant in Mohali, he would, at least, have helped carry the burden for the frontline spinners here. At one stage, Adil Rashid bowled a 28-over spell (from the 74th to the 128th over) which conceded 88 runs, while Moeen has only once (in Cape Town, when he bowled 52) delivered more than the 45 overs he has so far in this innings. And while both bowled reasonably well – Rashid sometimes finding sharp turn to beat the bat of even Kohli – there were, as expected, too many release deliveries to allow any pressure to build on the batsmen. The smart money suggests Liam Dawson – a left-arm spinner and decent batsman – will make his Test debut in Chennai in place of a seamer.And that is the nub of the problem. For it may well be that there is no combination of players available to England to prevail against India in these conditions. There may well be no left-arm spinner in England that could exploited these conditions to the extent that India could have been kept to under 400 for the first time in their first innings in this series. Virat Kohli and Ravi Ashwin really might be too good for them.Rare satisfaction for Adil Rashid as M Vijay is dismissed•AFPIt is hard to be wildly optimistic for the future, either. There would be fewer opportunities for red-ball spinners in the brave new world the ECB is planning. There would be no domestic first-class cricket in August (a List A competition would occupy those players not involved in the new T20 competition) and fewer reasons for counties to invest in young spin talents.But England cannot take such a defeatist attitude. And the further this tour progresses, the more it seems they have erred in their selection. It is not so much that the decision not to bring Jack Leach is puzzling, it is that they have chosen not to pick him while persisting with several players – notably Ballance, Steven Finn and, to a lesser extent Duckett – who they clearly have no intention of picking. Leach’s reputation, like others before him, may have grown in his absence from the side, but, even if he had batted at No. 11 here and not bowled an over, England would scarcely have been any worse off.Maybe things would not have appeared so bleak had England taken the chances that came their way? Jonny Bairstow missed a stumping opportunity off Murali Vijay when he had 45, Kohli was put down by Rashid – a tough caught and bowled chance – on 68, and Root put down Jayant Yadav on 8. When India were 307 for 6, it looked as if England might take a significant first-innings advantage. Kohli played magnificently, but England will know they had chances and they were unable to take them.”It’s bitterly disappointing,” Root agreed. “It just proves that when you create those half-chances, you have to make sure you take them.”It won’t be any consolation to England, but their supporters might reflect they were fortunate to be part of a perfect Mumbai Saturday. With 20,000 spectators lapping up every run and the red soil and magnificent stadium helping create a unique atmosphere, it was the sort of occasion most present will remember long after the memory of other games fades. England probably didn’t give themselves absolutely the best chance of success, but it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that, whatever they do, this series is going to be defined by Kohli’s excellence. He is the difference.
